Another year, another Rumble. The consensus seems to have been unfathomably positive, which I just cannot, well, fathom. The Rumble match was one long chore with no memorable moments save for a cliched Sabu table bump and the beginnings of a Kane/Booker feud that resides only on the Most Wanted lists of the most retarded of viewers. Then came the ending, which made Texas moisten itself and so tricked the rest of you into following suit. It should go without saying that it has been ten years since a Michaels/Taker feud meant anything. Ten years! When WCW revived the Hogan/Piper rivalry a decade after the event, the WWF and its fans took a collective dump on it. Now, all of a sudden, one of the Big Four PPVs is capped off with a similarly outdated face-off and people start clamouring about how it was one of the best Rumble matches ever? I’m sure I would agree, if only I had never seen any other Rumble matches ever. The only other things of note during the Rumble were the continued understated burial of ECW (only one elimination and that was Chris Masters) and Matt Hardy (turfed out by Edge while nobody was looking). Meanwhile, Edge and Randy Orton were left looking like chumps, a pair of veritable Tito Santanas caught up in a Hogan/Warrior finale that had little time for their presence.
All in all it’s a major downer and indicative of the abysmal job WWE has done of establishing fresh faces in the main event scene. Cena remains a work in progress, Lesnar had nowhere left to go but elsewhere, JBL drew nothing and never will, Benoit was but a momentary blip, Guerrero is dearly departed, Mysterio was exploited and suffered for it, Batista is a one-hit wonder, RVD was too stupid and too late, Edge was perhaps too much and too late, they failed with Orton, they deliberately failed with Matt Hardy, they are deliberately failing with Punk, while nobody other than their parents could possibly be convinced about Lashley or Kennedy yet. But don’t worry! It’s 2007, Test got a title shot on PPV and Mark Henry will be back soon!!
Okay, so it wasn’t all bad. Cena/Umaga certainly shocked me by putting on the match of the night, which was in fact far more entertaining than the last Angle/Joe bout. WWE accomplished this fantastic feat by doing what every wrestling promotion should but remarkably few actually do, namely playing up to the strengths of their workers and concealing their weaknesses. Cena and Umaga are two entirely average wrestlers but their feud was saved from antipathy by the benefit of carefully moulded hype and presentation, topped off with a well-paced and progressive brawl that told a clear story and left both competitors looking good. It goes without saying that WWE would put that effort into Cena’s matches these days, but surely they have enough backstage talent to be able to do that with every bout at the top end of the card?
Anyway, to the questions.
Oh, and the e-mail link.
Now, to the questions:
Travis Hasch gets to the centre of things:
“In regards to the Saturn/Mike Bell incident, and you not having a clip…
I’m sure this has been mentioned, but in the first Youtube video you posted about people messing up spots… at about the 5:50 mark there’s Bell blotching on Saturn and the subsequent assbeating.
Just thought you’d like to know, oh… and they were talking about the ring barricades, not the cages.”
I was talking about diabetic bees. It had been a strange and unusual moment, yet it passed without incident as it waved lollipops at those black-and-yellow suicide bombers with delirious pleasure. What? Wrestling? Oh, yeah. Saturn. Mike Bell. Video. Link. Drug stabbing time, somewhere. Unfortunate?
Next…
Matt Reed missed Mr Waltman:
“OK, I got a question for you, what did you think of Wrestling Society X’s debut? I personally think it was great, with more fancy moves than the last month of RAW.
And it’s nice to see X-Pac again.”
I thought Wrestling Society X’s debut was thoroughly missable, so I did indeed choose to miss it. As far as I’m aware they have no plans lined up for a UK TV spot, I don’t even get any MTV channels anyway, and if I can’t even be bothered to download Smackdown even when there’s a Benoit/Finlay match on it then I’m certainly not going to spread my bandwith legs for X-Pac’s benefit. Ew, could you imagine?
He’s not so much ‘known for living a surreal life’ as he is ‘known to suck’ and ‘known to have done things to an immensely protruding clitoris’. But let’s not dwell on that.
WSX can do some above-average ratings in comparison to MTV’s usual ratings for the timeslot, much as ECW is still doing very well for Sci Fi compared to the network’s usual programming, but nobody should get their hopes raised. This is not the next WCW. It’s not even going to be the next WWA. It’s a novelty TV show with nowhere to go, no hope of successfully promoting house shows or PPVs, no interest in doing such things anyway, no star power, no cross-over potential, no stories to tell and no sense of pace, which is essential to building and expanding an audience. WWE has the benefit of tradition, UFC has the contemporary buzz, TNA and ROH have the ‘discerning’ wrestling fans on their side, and WSX is just a curiousity, with less potential than Celebrity Deathmatch.
Speaking of which:
TNA should really try and sign those announcers.
Next…
Matt Reed returns!
“I absolutely can’t get enough of those videos you posted of Jake Roberts
making a total ass of himself.
You got any more videos of legendary trainwrecks in wrestling history?”
This column seems to have become a haven for wrestling trainwrecks. We’ve had cracked-up Jake Roberts, leg-cracking Sid, the crack-balanced Shockmaster, Booker T cracking up at the N-word and last week’s cracking festival of flub footage. Can there be anything worse that’s better? Well, how about this:
Not even an act of a wrestling god could save that trainwreck.
Next…
Mike Long enquires about a nearly-crippled Crippler:
“Hey Ian,
My name is Mike and I love your column. I’ve watched
WWE nearly my whole life and have been devout reader
of the IWC for almost 4 years. just wanna ask you a
double question about something pretty recent. I saw a
really cool looking visual a while ago in a preview
for a match about a year ago and now the E has
recently put it in their NEW Don’t Try This At Home
intro for DVDs. It is Benoit literally FLYING into an
announce table and almost kiiling himself. I own every
PPV from the last five years or so, and I know it is
Benoit vs Booker, but it isn’t in any PPV. My question
is when did this happen (was it a Smackdown, house
show) and is there a way I could get a hold of this
match? Thanks.”
That’s from the 21.10.05 edition of Smackdown (or, for you confused Americans, the 10.21.05 edition), when Booker won the United States Title from Benoit for the 6,582nd time or thereabouts. The table bump was harsh to say the very least but it happened early on in the match and Benoit dusted himself off to continue wrestling for another ten minutes afterwards. Why? Because he’s Chris F’N Benoit. And that’s the strange thing about the wrestling business. Benoit has never really had any gimmicks and never really participated in any character-building exercises. He’s just a highly talented wrestler with a constantly strong work ethic and a consistently high level of performance. The fans picked up on that and got behind him. To this day he gets great reactions from respectful crowds all over the world, which are helped immensely by his push being steady and natural and not at all artificial. So why then, in this post-kayfabe age, do wrestling promoters insist on trying to shove artificial flavourings down the throats of their viewers? Abyss shot his father three times and put him in a coma?!? Holy shit, order me up one a them there paper vues, Jo-Bob!! Ah’m a Stinjer!! Hee-yaw, etc. Fucking morons.
Anyway, the match is not on any official DVD release but have a look around various tape traders online. Such as this place.
Next…
Greg Guity:
“Hello, Greg from NYC here, with one question:
Of the few WWE DVDs I have in my collection, I’ve noticed that Jesse “The Body†Ventura has been edited out of matches I clearly remember him providing color commentary for. Why has this happened?”
It happened because Vince McMahon, or somebody on the WWF legal team who wanted to impress Vince McMahon with their penny-pinching skills, tried to pull a fast one on Ventura back in late ’80s. Ventura was told that only the wrestlers received royalties on video tape sales and that he should not get any. In 1991 he found out that he was in fact entitled to royalties and so he launched a law suit against Titan Sports, which resulted in a federal court awarding him nearly a million dollars in compensation. He originally aimed for double that amount but, hey, you take what you can. After that WWE was forced to pay Ventura royalties on every video/DVD release, which means they have been particularly select about which releases his commentary appears on. They can get away without it on something like the Bret Hart set, for instance, but they really have no choice but to shell out for it on things like the WrestleMania Anthology. There’s an in-depth article about the legal ramifications of the case up here if you want more information.
Randomly, Ventura also gave Gene Okerlund the “Mean Gene” moniker that stuck with him throughout his career. It also got him into some legal trouble last year, as the fast food chains Mean Gene’s Burgers and Mean Gene’s Pizza were owned by his nephews, yet they went their separate ways and the nephew that sided with Okerlund lost the rights to the Mean Gene name. The law is a strange and unusual device and it caused Indiana Jones to marry Ally McBeal, so f*ck it.
Next…
Kevin Sunday:
“Hey Mr Burnside,
Good to see you’ve got a column where it seems like you can actually enjoy what you are talking about, and not be put through reviewing the painful drivel that is WWE programming. For awhile, it seemed like you had had enough with writing columns about performers and storylines you couldn’t stand.
Anyway, I’ve got a question for the Q&A that might stretch your resources:
Being only 20 years old, does Kenny Dykestra get the other wrestlers of legal age to buy him booze when he’s out on the road?”
Yes, in hindsight I should have stopped the Anti-Pulse earlier than I did. The last batch were concerned with little more than going through the motions, since after this one there was nothing more that needed to be said. But don’t get me started, else I’ll start crying into my beer about how wrestling should have ended after WrestleMania XX.
I’d imagine young Kenneth enjoys the UK tours more than the rest of the Raw roster. And the Canadian ones too, since I think their legal drinking starts at 19, doesn’t it? Well, except for Alberta, but Bret Hart had a stroke. Why are Americans so reluctant to let young people drink alcohol anyway? Hell, the first time I got drunk I was three years old, yet I’ve never shot anybody with anything more dangerous than a suction dart. In any event there is something quite unsettling about Ric Flair losing to a guy who can’t get served in a bar. Of course, how much Doane gets to drink does depend is not the issue. The real question is how much Mickie James will allow him to drink, although if I was in his shoes and she started pestering me I would merely politely remind her that I wasn’t the one who did a pornographic photoshoot and nudge her lovingly into the direction of the nearest publican.
In the interests of fairness I asked Eric S. for his comments about his ‘illegitimate son’ potentially favouring the hooch. As he put it, “…it would be an act of rank hypocrisy for me to condemn his underage drinking when I did the same thing in college. Ditto if he smoked pot. However, I never ran around with complete and utter whores who were too old for me like LaJames. All I can hope is that he doesn’t get too drunk and forgets the condom. His insurance doesn’t cover visits to venerologists.”
Don’t worry, Eric. Widro has a special joint locked up for you just in case the world ends and Mickie James gives you an illegitimate grandson.
Next…
Roland Phoarsquin sounds like a delightful fellow:
“Ive just watched a match from AJPW in 1994, where Mitsuharu Misawa defended 3 belts, apparently called the Triple Crown. Whats all that about? Why 3? Where are they all from? Why are they unified?”
It was a laugh, three was all they could find at the novelty store, they all came from aforementioned novelty store on Sakahura Boulevard in Osaka, and they were unified after being melted down and formed into a big gold chain.
Or, the cliffnoted alternative…
The AJPW Triple Crown is the name given to the holder of the NWA International Heavyweight Title, the NWA United National Title and the PWF Heavyweight Title, which were unified into a single championship by AJPW co-founder Shohei Baba in 1989. Baba quite rightly felt that the NWA was an outdated concept by that point and wanted to have one major champion that the promotion could rally behind as a counter to NJPW’s IWGP World Heavyweight Title, which had been formed in 1987. The PWF belt was a remnant from AJPW’s early days, when Baba had created a Pacific Wrestling Federation ‘governing body’ that would oversee the titles in the company and was downgraded into a regional belt when they joined the NWA. The NWA International belt had been around since the ’50s as part of the Alliance’s working agreement with the old Japanese Wrestling Association, which folded in 1973 after Baba and Antonio Inoki had quit to form AJPW. At that time of great confusion among the Japanese wrestling scene the reigning title-holder, Kintaro Ohki, did a lot of freelance shows in South Korea until the NWA forced him to vacate the title in 1981 in order to get it back to Japan on a permanent basis under their watch. The NWA United National belt was originally based in the USA until Inoki won it in 1971, bringing it to the JWA. Inoki and Baba went on to revive it in 1976 as an AJPW title. There also used to be a Triple Crown trophy in addition to the belts but that seems to have stopped now. They are also planning to retire the separate belts and bring in a new singular title belt to represent the Triple Crown.
Which explanation is more suitable? U-decide. Choose your own adventure. I chose not to choose my own adventure. I chose not to choose life. I chose to eat cheese. I also saw the weirdest thing down at the beach. This guy’s dog was swimming in the sea and he was standing on the sand, skimming stones straight at it.
Next…
You know the drill by now. The drill requires more questions. Feed the drill. Do not fear the drill. The drill is your friend. The drill employs dentists. Dentists have mouths to feed. And, lo, the circle of life revolves happily ever after…
